Sea-Ice Deprived Polar Bears Looking for New Habitat
11.01.2010 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Flora & Fauna, Arctic
Results from a long-term study published in the December issue of Arctic, the quarterly magazine of the Arctic Institute of North America, show changes in polar bears’ habitat in response to changing sea ice conditions in the southern Beaufort Sea.
Biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska collected data between 1979 and 2005 showing polar bears in the region have found more frequently on land and in open water than on ice during the fall. During this period, polar bears were observed during annual bowhead whale aerial surveys in the southern Beaufort Sea.
The data, which also includes the sea ice conditions at the time of the polar bear sightings, mentions the animals were found in different habitats depending on different ice conditions. While the number of bears sighted steadily increased from 138 bears in the years 1979-1987 to 468 bears between 1997 and 2005, sightings where the bears were not on ice increased form 12% during the earlier period to 90% during the later period.
The study was not designed to estimate the number of bears using the near shore area and one can therefore not conclude that more bears are occurring in the near shore waters off the Southern Beaufort Sea coast. The study does suggest, however, that more bears use the near-shore area because sea ice is unavailable.
With bear-human interactions on the rise in recent years, the study underlines the need to develop programs to manage bear-human interactions in coastal areas.
